Looking to fund your startup? If you're new to the process, fundraising can be difficult to navigate. Not only are there a myriad of ways to go about it, but it can be hard to tell whether the tips, tricks, and advice floating around are based on any evidence at all.

[This week, I'm turning the mic over to my friends at The Startup Podcast. featuring Carter's head of insights on what you need to know about today's fundraising environment and how AI is affecting valuations, equity, and how companies grow. Here's how they describe this episode...]

So, what is the truth?
And what are the actual, data-backed insights that can help you choose the best method of fundraising for your own business?

Enter: Peter Walker.

As Head of Insights at Carta, he has access to, and industry knowledge about, the vast sets of funding data that will help you cut through the noise. Today, he joins Chris and Yaniv in discussing the real data behind startup funding trends in 2025 and the key takeaways you can apply to your own startups.

In this episode, you will:

• Discover why Silicon Valley valuations often hurt founders more than they help
• Understand how AI startups now account for nearly half of all venture funding, and what that means for non-AI founders
• Learn how lean AI-driven teams are reshaping early-stage hiring, with Series A companies shrinking from 25 employees to just 15
• See why most founders misunderstand SAFE notes
• Explore why 70% of startup employees never exercise their equity
• Uncover the reasons behind why nearly 40% of startups lose a co-founder within seven years
• Get clarity on founder vesting, equity splits, and why a six-year vesting schedule may protect your company better than four
• Reframe your goals as a founder: why chasing “life-changing money” isn’t the right reason to start a company

---
Featured voices:

• Peter Walker - Head of Insights at Carta
• Yaniv Bernstein - Co-host of The Startup Podcast
• Chris Saad - Co-host of The Startup Podcast
• Me (Dan Blumberg) — I’m the host of CRAFTED. and the founder of Modern Product Minds. HMU if you want to build something great. I love building from zero to one.

---
And if you please…

• TAKE THE SURVEY: It'll just take five minutes and I'll give $100 to the charity of choice for one lucky respondent
• Share with a friend! Word of mouth is by far the most powerful way for podcasts to grow
• Subscribe to the CRAFTED. newsletter at crafted.fm
• Share your feedback! I’m experimenting with new episode formats and would love your honest feedback on this and other episodes. Email me: dan@modernproductminds.com or DM me on LinkedIn
• Sponsor the show? I’m actively speaking to potential sponsors for 2026 episodes. Drop me a line and let’s talk.
• Get psyched!… There are some big updates to this show coming soon!

“So if you take any great startup and look backwards, you'll see that 90 percent of their growth came from like 10 percent of the stuff that they tried. So how do you find that 10 percent as quickly as possible?”

Matt Lerner has advised hundreds of startups on how to grow. Now, the CEO of SYSTM has written a book called Growth Levers and How to Find Them where he shares his approach. This episode of CRAFTED. is full of actionable advice on how you can grow your products and companies. Matt will tell us about the mindset shift founders need to make from thinking about their products to thinking about their customers needs. We'll talk about jobs-to-be-done (JTBD) style interviewing and why it's such a powerful approach, but also why at first Matt was put off by some of the overly academic language that often goes with jobs. And we'll talk about how you can get new customers to that aha moment as quickly as possible, so they stick with your product. Plus, lots of real talk about founders and the mistakes they make.

---
Featured voices:

• Matt Lerner (Founder and CEO of SYSTM; the book is Growth Levers and How to Find Them)
• Me (Dan Blumberg) — I’m the host of CRAFTED. and the founder of Modern Product Minds. HMU if you want to build something great. I love building from zero to one.

---
And if you please…

• TAKE THE SURVEY: It'll just take five minutes and these surveys are actually really important for podcasters.
• Share with a friend! Word of mouth is by far the most powerful way for podcasts to grow
• Subscribe to the CRAFTED. newsletter at crafted.fm
• Share your feedback! I’m experimenting with new episode formats and would love your honest feedback on this and other episodes. Email me: dan@modernproductminds.com or DM me on LinkedIn
• Sponsor the show? I’m actively speaking to potential sponsors for 2026 episodes. Drop me a line and let’s talk.
• Get psyched!… There are some big updates to this show coming soon

---
Key Moments:

• (02:10) - 90 percent of growth comes 10 percent of the stuff you try
• (03:43) - Over-thinkers, under-thinkers, and delegators: the 3 types of founders and the mistakes they make
• (07:30) - Why the pace of learning is so important
• (09:41) - Great examples of companies that learn quickly
• (10:42) - The “locksmith moment” and why you need to find yours
• (12:35) - Jobs-to-be-Done style interviewing and why it’s so effective
• (13:57) - How to do a JTBD interview
• (15:05) - The mindset shift founders need to make from thinking about their product to thinking about the customers’ needs – and why it’s so hard for them to do so
• (21:14) - Growth Sprints and how to set them up for success
• (24:57) - Retention and customer activation: still (!) overlooked by most and why it’s so critical
• (28:50) - Matt writes a blog post on the spot about how working at an oil refinery taught him about startups
• (31:26) - Writing a book is not an agile process! And the fantastic reception for Growth Levers

** I'd be so grateful if you'd take five minutes and answer our annual survey. It'll help me make the show better for you! **

Hey folks, it's Thanksgiving weekend here in the US and it's the time of year when we think about what we're grateful for, so today I'm re-sharing some words from perhaps the most grateful person I've ever had on the show.

Kelsey Hightower is a legendary developer. And he has an incredible story. He went from sleeping in his car to becoming a pioneer in the Kubernetes world, a distinguished engineer at Google, and then... he retired. At the age of 42. Because he wanted to have more impact on the world than he thought he could have by advancing up the career ladder.

So here are 15 minutes of my original interview with him, because some of the things he said — not about tech, but about humanity, gratitude, and prioritizing what matters — have really stuck with me.

Here’s the full interview, originally released in July 2024. We cover a lot, including how he became so good at live demos, why emotion is the key to great software — and storytelling — and how it’s those “boring innovations” and mindset shifts you need to make as a technologist that will take you from “hello, world” to “hello, revenue.”
---
Featured voices:

• Kelsey Hightower: "Retired, not tired" former distinguished engineer at Google and Kubernetes Pioneer
• Me (Dan Blumberg) — I’m the host of CRAFTED. and the founder of Modern Product Minds. HMU if you want to build something great. I love building from zero to one.

---
And if you please…

• TAKE THE SURVEY: It'll just take five minutes and these surveys are actually really important for podcasters.
• Share with a friend! Word of mouth is by far the most powerful way for podcasts to grow
• Subscribe to the CRAFTED. newsletter at crafted.fm
• Share your feedback! I’m experimenting with new episode formats and would love your honest feedback on this and other episodes. Email me: dan@modernproductminds.com or DM me on LinkedIn
• Sponsor the show? I’m actively speaking to potential sponsors for 2026 episodes. Drop me a line and let’s talk.
• Get psyched!… There are some big updates to this show coming soon